America, Hide! Katie Price Is Coming…

I’m really sorry, I don’t quite know how to break this news in a way that won’t cause massive outbreaks of panic and alarm. Let’s just say that there’s another British cultural export on the way over, and, well, she’s something of an acquired taste.

You know how you’ve got Kim Kardashian? We’ll we’ve our own equivalent in the form of Katie Price. For those of you who haven’t been following her career to day, she’s a former glamour model who rode the tabloids like a bucking bronco and never got thrown off.

The salient points are these: she went into reality TV, met a husband in the form of former pop star Peter Andre, raised a family on camera in a series of docu-soaps, wrote nine or ten autobiographies, made a perfume, made some underwear, split with Peter, met a cross-dressing kickboxer called Alex, split up with him, dressed up as Freddie Mercury for Comic Relief and has a disabled son called Harvey who was once the butt of a particularly nasty joke by the Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle, for which she is still seeking an apology.

And the reason I know all this and it’s relevant to her work is that this IS her work. She appears in docu-soaps for a living. And now she’s doing another one in your fair land, courtesy of Fox, and while we’re about to put the bunting out and have a massive party, it’s only fair to spare a thought for all of you in the beleaguered U.S. of A.

She told the Sun: “I’ll be in America in September and they’re trying to work out what they want to do. I’m not trying to be famous or massive, I’m just doing what I want to do.”

“It’s taken nearly a year to set this contract up. We’re thinking of doing the road trip from New York to Los Angeles.

“But I want a big Priscilla-style van. You’ve got to make it fun. The cameras will be inside the van. That’s what we’re working on at the moment. “

Whatever she does, it’s likely to be high-concept, and yes, the UK will be getting a feed of it too: “I don’t think anyone wants to see me in the hairdressers and getting my nails done all the time.”

Fraser McAlpine

Fraser has been writing and broadcasting about music and popular culture for over 15 years, first at the Top of the Pops website, and most recently for the NME, Guardian and MSN. He also wrote BBC Radio 1's Chart Blog and reviews albums for BBC Radio 2.
He is Anglophenia's current resident Brit, blogging about British slang and running around the Mall taking snaps of the crowd at the Royal Wedding, as well as reigniting a childhood passion for classic Doctor Who and cramming as much music in as he can manage.
Fraser invites you to join him on Twitter: @csi_popmusic